"Intel Will Not Support Ubuntu's XMir" What will be the consequences?

[Gyokuro]

Yes - Intel could but why should they take care about something which get only used in a single distribution - for the said ecosystem where Canonical played a game and lost it?? Canonical have done already great work of fragmentation of said ecosystem and it seems they do not care as they live in their Ubuntu universe but the rest have not forgotten how this Mir debacle started - X11 have layed the foundation for Wayland years before - in their hard work in X11/Mesa and carefully engineering and the road was and is: X11=>wayland. Intel made a statement and I think the decission of NVidia/AMD will not be different as Intels one.

[etna2]

I can't believe I registered just to post this, but what the hey.

Strictly speaking yes, but Intel is a giant compared to Canonical, and if they cared about the overall Linux ecosystem, surely maintaining a small patch would be a good altruistic intention right?

It's because they care about Linux that they are doing this. No operating system can, and neither should it have to support more than 1 fundamental stack such as the graphics stack. Remember the madness that resulted when Microsoft updated the display stack from what it was in Windows XP and earlier to the new one that is being used in Vista and later? Most of the manufacturers were slow in delivering updated drivers that conform to the new model even though Microsoft already notified the hardware manufacturers well in advance about the need for updated drivers to properly support new graphics stack. The transition to Wayland is definitely not going to be all smooth and plain sailing, and now you want to suddenly introduce another source of uncertainty to the migration with Mir?

After all, they know their driver the best. It's not that Intel isn't capable, but that ideologically they want community efforts to consolidate behind Wayland I suppose, since they've already invested time and effort in it, and this is one way to get the message across to the other hardware makers and distributions to get behind them in line, and begin to shun Mir.

Which is the way things should be done. As i said earlier, an operating system should not have to support more than 1 of any of the fundamental components that drives it. How many graphics stacks do most of the operating systems have today? Windows has only 1, OS X has only 1, the BSDs have only 1, Android has only 1, etc etc. You get the point. It's just silly to have more than 1 display server for Linux especially when they are binary incompatible with each other where drivers are concerned. It's already so difficult to get manufacturers to support Linux with drivers, either closed or open, and leave it to Canonical to complicate things up a notch with their announcement of Mir. Especially when they were the original proponents of Wayland that started this massive development effort on it, only for them to never contribute anything to Wayland and now turn their back and mooch off all the existing hard work that was put into it.

If Ubuntu still wants to be called a Linux distribution that it has to expect to play by the established rules and practices in use. Ubuntu can have its own init daemon (Upstart), its own DE (Unity) and anything else that they fancy but when it comes to aspects that concern drivers, it's 'upstream or die', because no major hardware vendor is going to support single distro-only solutions and write special drivers to support that 'special' distribution.

And Intel has just demonstrated that to Canonical in the bluntest of ways.

And for the record, if the planned X11 migration path was to move to Mir i'd be saying the same thing about Wayland in this post. But it's not; the official migration path as agreed upon by almost all non-Ubuntu distributions is X11 ---> Wayland, as was decided at least 2 - 3 ago.

[leo-ms]

Why did Intel so suddenly decide to stop support? Was there some little squabble or spit that happened?

[etna2]

Yes - Intel could but why should they take care about something which get only used in a single distribution - for the said ecosystem where Canonical played a game and lost it?? Canonical have done already great work of fragmentation of said ecosystem and it seems they do not care as they live in their Ubuntu universe but the rest have not forgotten how this Mir debacle started - X11 have layed the foundation for Wayland years before - in their hard work in X11/Mesa and carefully engineering and the road was and is: X11=>wayland. Intel made a statement and I think the decission of NVidia/AMD will not be different as Intels one.

Unfortunately most Ubuntu users do not know about this bit of history...and about the sorry state of Linux graphics driver support as it already is today even with only 1 display server.

Otherwise they would not be supporting Mir or Xmir in any way.

[Gyokuro]

Yes you are correct as long it works for them it is ok but outside of this tiny universe it is different and a lot of people(developers) take care of this ecosystem and they have not forgotten. As long there are enough Linux users in the enterprise market which are demanding closed source X11 drivers for their CAD/CUDA work binary drivers get released which should make Linux home users happy - that's the only reason why binary graphics drivers for Linux are available. They earn money with enterprise clients not home users and said enterprise are interested in a sane migration from X11 to a sucessor and Intel have to take care of this clients which are developing for Xeon Phi another area is Tizen.

[kaldor]

I think this is a justifiable move by Intel. Wayland has been in the works for years and is well-established, so why should everyone cater to Ubuntu's separate and unique product? If Canonical wishes to create their own ecosystem (I am by no means against that), then they should expect to do the work on their own. It isn't Intel's responsibility to provide support for a project that is not only against the rest of the community, but also not certain to succeed.

[buzzingrobot]

These ideological and grudge-driven decisions among the developer community damage Linux. It's disheartening to see a corporation like Intel announce a decision like this via a nastygram post on GitHub. (So much so I wonder if it is valid.) Is that how Intel deals with other businesses?

Canonical has done nothing wrong by deciding to develop software that is best for them and their purposes. That's what the "free" in FOSS is all about. You are free to do what you wish, and you get to deal with all the implications of your choices. I'm pretty sure Canonical knows the implications of their Mir decisions.

Many in the developer community are arguing, essentially, that Mir is unhealthy for the developer community. Perhaps it is. But, the interests of the broader Linux community -- the users -- and the interests of the narrow community -- the developers -- aren't necessarily identical.

When the dust settles, I'll use Mir or Wayland or X, which ever I think is best for my purposes. I'm a user, and I don't have a reason to commit to one side or the other.

[BigSilly]

These ideological and grudge-driven decisions among the developer community damage Linux. It's disheartening to see a corporation like Intel announce a decision like this via a nastygram post on GitHub. (So much so I wonder if it is valid.) Is that how Intel deals with other businesses?

Canonical has done nothing wrong by deciding to develop software that is best for them and their purposes. That's what the "free" in FOSS is all about. You are free to do what you wish, and you get to deal with all the implications of your choices. I'm pretty sure Canonical knows the implications of their Mir decisions.

Many in the developer community are arguing, essentially, that Mir is unhealthy for the developer community. Perhaps it is. But, the interests of the broader Linux community -- the users -- and the interests of the narrow community -- the developers -- aren't necessarily identical.

When the dust settles, I'll use Mir or Wayland or X, which ever I think is best for my purposes. I'm a user, and I don't have a reason to commit to one side or the other.

Got to say, I'm no expert on everything that's happening with Mir, Wayland, X etc, but I do agree with your post. I think it comes across as very unprofessional how this has been done, and I imagine there's nothing altruistic in their decision. I don't think Intel was rushing in to save the world at all. Rather, it seems to me that they simply aren't going to do the Mir work for Canonical, and this makes sense and you don't have to be a developer to understand that. Like you say, I am pretty confident that when Canonical made these decisions to go their own route, they knew things like this would happen. They knew they'd have to do their own work to make Mir viable.

But the whole poisoning of Ubuntu thing going on is very sad indeed, and sad to see it going on outside of forums, spilling into professional companies doing and saying silly things.

[JDShu]

These ideological and grudge-driven decisions among the developer community damage Linux. It's disheartening to see a corporation like Intel announce a decision like this via a nastygram post on GitHub. (So much so I wonder if it is valid.) Is that how Intel deals with other businesses?

Intel does many things that are not nice - if you follow GKH on G+ there are plenty of complaints about the way they do business. They are a huge corporation, what do you expect? It is expressly against their interests to support a competing solution. At the same time they are well within their rights to accept whichever patches they want in their own upstream. The same way that Canonical is well within their right to roll their own solution over the current standard.

Canonical has done nothing wrong by deciding to develop software that is best for them and their purposes. That's what the "free" in FOSS is all about. You are free to do what you wish, and you get to deal with all the implications of your choices. I'm pretty sure Canonical knows the implications of their Mir decisions.

"Wrong" is really in the eye of the beholder. The history behind the introduction of Mir certainly makes Canonical look bad to some people - FUD/Incompetence regarding Wayland, secret development of an "Open" project etc. If you can't understand the criticism, then you are refusing to look. Again, at the same time, Canonical has the right to do whatever they want. They are a private company. But they have to realize that certain things they do can and will have an effect on how other companies respond to them. Making enemies of other corporations in the eco system is not an intelligent course of action.

Many in the developer community are arguing, essentially, that Mir is unhealthy for the developer community. Perhaps it is. But, the interests of the broader Linux community -- the users -- and the interests of the narrow community -- the developers -- aren't necessarily identical.

Mir may benefit the Ubuntu community (not the rest of the Linux community) if it is done well. We don't know if that will be the case at all. There are many ways in which it could end badly for users - we just don't know at this point. On the other hand the harm to the developer community is very predictable and real.

When the dust settles, I'll use Mir or Wayland or X, which ever I think is best for my purposes. I'm a user, and I don't have a reason to commit to one side or the other.

You do that. For me on the other hand, I call what I see, and from what I can see, Canonical is making more enemies for a solution of dubious value. EDIT: I forgot to mention the main point which is that this particular commit sounds more like an Intel developer passing the blame to his boss.

[monkeybrain20122]

Yes - Intel could but why should they take care about something which get only used in a single distribution - for the said ecosystem where Canonical played a game and lost it??.

It will be used by a single distribution if Intel etc make sure that other distribution cannot use it by not supporting Mir upstream (the patch is written by Canonical employee so it is not even that Intel has to do the supporting). So this is a bit of circular reasoning. Note that the developer who reversed the decision to support Mir is the same one who accepted the patch in the first place, citing "management" to remove the patch. So the developer doesn't have an issue, it is a political decision by the company.

BTW I am no Mir fan, I would much rather they stick with the broader ecosystem, but just saying. I don't think Canonical would go back on Mir at this point, with so much work and money invested in mobile and touch already. On the other hand, so far no one other than Intel says it will support Wayland either.